Tuesday, August 3, 2010

How'd the Ballet Turn Out?

Here I'm with my teacher, Mimi MacDonald, on my eighth lesson and last day of adult-beginner ballet class at the Center of Contemporary Arts. I took it for the challenge. I never got good at it, but we all made progress and Mimi (trained by a Soviet ballet master in the strict Vaganova method) understood that maybe my hip sockets aren't like those of classmates 35 years younger; thus my difficulty with the basic turnout. I enjoyed the variety of people in the class, all dressed alike and reaching for the same ideal. It wasn't at all like writing, unless it was like learning the fundamentals, such as the alphabet and how to hold those fat pencils--so long ago I don't remember. I do think now, however, of the people who had the patience to teach me. Thank you.

I practiced between weekly classes with a beginning-ballet DVD (cursing, perspiring, at best making it through 65 minutes of a 90-minute DVD), thinking about what Martha Graham said in her autobiography: "Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired."

Isn't it weird that our bodies can't do what the younger ones can anymore? I can never quite believe it, until I attempt to do something out of my normal bounds. I refuse to believe it, and then I go pull a muscle, or break a toe or something.

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Successful writer, author and scholar, with 40 years' writing and publishing experience, 31 years' university teaching experience, and 17 years as an editor offering all author support services. See www.BookEval.com for those services and for references.